Cultural Commercialism

Advertisements, mass production, sacrificing quality for time and quantity, the desire for bigger and better, these are the problems of commercialism. Commercialism has been advancing nearly unnoticed by most consumers even since Babylonian times. But, what makes it harmful enough to be explained in a paper?

Everyday we sit in our homes desiring goods and services that we do not need or may not even want, and discussing issues that have little or no importance to our lives other than to make small talk. Everyday we work hard to buy stuff that is better or at least equal to what society considers normal. As our former president Herbert Hoover even stated prior to the Great Depression, what he would have liked to see in every American household is "Two cars in every garage" (The American President: Herbert Hoover, 2002). We are fashioning ourselves to be boringly equal cogs in one giant corporate machine, and in turn, are losing our culture to business and propaganda. When a new "hipper" culture appears, commercialists explode the culture across the United States like a plague. What average adult would not know what a skateboard is, what reggae music is, or what Middle East tension is. We have all been commercialized by the news, advertisements, and businesses, for which we are sacrificing our beliefs, traditions, and everyday things that classifies us as humans. What is stopping future generations from becoming overweight, non-constructive, violence-promoting couch potatoes, who only move to grab something to eat or to procreate? Our society is training us to become such objects, and something must be done.

If lack of culture is not enough, think economics, nearly all products are focused towards the average consumer, or "all individuals or households that want goods and services for personal consumption or use and have the resources to buy them" (Nickels, McHugh, J., & McHugh, S., 2002, p. 409). This means that no matter how ...